Strangest Rule Lawyering

[Zogg]

Re: Cleave

CLEAVE [GENERAL]
Putting on my rules lawyer hat: I hit the orc warrior for 6 hp of damage, but the orc shaman has cast shield other, so the warrior only takes 3 hp of damage. Can I still Cleave? After all, I did deal enough damage "to make it drop" - it just didn't drop because of the shield other.

Your example is abundantly flawed. It's pretty clear, if no one drops/dies, you get no cleave. Your example might be interesting if the fighter hit the orc warrior for 10 damage and the shaman standing 40 ft. away dropped because he had less than 5 HP (and took damage from the shield other spell). Then the question could be asked "Did the fighter obtain a cleave? If so, can the fighter cleave the same guy he just attacked (and hence obtained the cleave from)?"

CLEAVE [GENERAL]
Also. Can you Cleave with a spell? There is nothing in the feat description that says you have to use a weapon. I could see how a rules-lawyery DM could go either way with this one.

Actually it says you have to use the same weapon. Furthermore, unless the spellcaster is using a touch or ranged touch spell, there is no way to determine the BAB. I don't think anyone has ever suggested that you should get cleave by falling someone with a spell - it's pretty preposterous.

 

[buzz]

Re: Cleave

I hit the orc warrior for 6 hp of damage, but the orc shaman has cast shield other, so the warrior only takes 3 hp of damage. Can I still Cleave? After all, I did deal enough damage "to make it drop" - it just didn't drop because of the shield other.

How did you do enough damage to make it drop? You did not reduce the orc to below 0hp or kill it. Ergo, you did not "drop" it. It's be no different if the orc had DR. You simply did not do enough damage that got through.

I think the wording of the feat is fine. That DM was simply on krak.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Re: Cleave

Putting on my rules lawyer hat: I hit the orc warrior for 6 hp of damage, but the orc shaman has cast shield other, so the warrior only takes 3 hp of damage. Can I still Cleave? After all, I did deal enough damage "to make it drop" - it just didn't drop because of the shield other.

But, you didn't deal enough damage to the warrior to drop it--you only dealt 3 points of damage to the warrior (and 3 points to the cleric). So, no, you can't cleave.




[edit - formatting]

 

[Joshua Randall]

[RulesLawyer] It says you must "deal enough damage to make it drop". 6 damage is enough damage to make an orc drop. I dealt 6 damage. Therefor I get to Cleave. (It doesn't matter that the 6 damage was split up, 3 to the orc warrior and 3 to the orc shaman, because of shield other). [/RulesLawyer]

Yeah, I'm being a jerk, but in order to make the point that Cleave is vague, at least when you wear the rules lawyer hat.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I have a sad, sad tale of a guy with a character who ran around carrying a heavy lance in one hand. Not only did this guy claim that his character could use it effectively in combat, he claimed that his character would deal double damage on a charge.

Note that the character was not on a horse.

It's nice that 3.5 specifies that lances deal double damage only when wielded from the back of a charging mount, and that they can only be used one-handed while mounted. But really, it's sad that such explanation is needed.

-z

 

[billd91]

[RulesLawyer] It says you must "deal enough damage to make it drop". 6 damage is enough damage to make an orc drop. I dealt 6 damage. Therefor I get to Cleave. (It doesn't matter that the 6 damage was split up, 3 to the orc warrior and 3 to the orc shaman, because of shield other). [/RulesLawyer]

Yeah, I'm being a jerk, but in order to make the point that Cleave is vague, at least when you wear the rules lawyer hat.

You rolled sufficient damage but only dealt 3 to the target in question because the rest was dealt to someone else.
If I had a player try that argument on me, I'd squash him with that. Damage dealt is dependent upon where that damage actually came home to roost.

Fortunately, even though you do run into situations like this at conventions like Gen Con, they are relatively rare. Most GMs, of any game system, at a con will know largely what they are doing.

 

[Zaruthustran]

[RulesLawyer] It says you must "deal enough damage to make it drop". 6 damage is enough damage to make an orc drop. I dealt 6 damage. Therefor I get to Cleave. (It doesn't matter that the 6 damage was split up, 3 to the orc warrior and 3 to the orc shaman, because of shield other). [/RulesLawyer]

Yeah, I'm being a jerk, but in order to make the point that Cleave is vague, at least when you wear the rules lawyer hat.

That hat doesn't fit. What you're doing is mis-interpreting a rule/getting a rule wrong. That's not rules-lawyering.

If your attack does 6 damage, and the target of your attack is an orc with Shield Other, then the orc takes 3 damage and the shaman takes 3. At no point does the orc take 6 damage. It takes only 3. 3 is not enough to make it drop. So no Cleave.

I always considered real rules-lawyering to be "the act of manipulating rules to achieve a result clearly outside the intent of the rules."

An example of rules lawyering is the one-handed lance thing I talked about above above. Clearly not intended, but technically "legal" thanks to clever rules manipulation.

-z, who believes that rule lawyers should be shot on sight.

 

[Starman]

I played in an RPGA game a few months ago. It was one of the most horrible games I have played in. Some of his rulings were:

*Ties go to the defender in combat. Yes, he actually said that if the target's AC was 18 and your attack roll only came to 18, you missed.

*If you had the Sunder feat and you attacked a weapon and hit, you broke the weapon. You didn't roll for damage, you just broke it.

That's all I remember off the top of my head. I'm still in therapy trying to forget the bad memories.

Starman

 

[Darkness]

*Ties go to the defender in combat. Yes, he actually said that if the target's AC was 18 and your attack roll only came to 18, you missed.

Eh, not the worst possible House Rule. It just means that everyone hits 5% less of the time (and possibly that a natural 20 isn't an automatic hit). It's like starting AC at 11, which the 3.0 designers allegedly considered ('cause it means that a character with a +0 to hit has a 50% chance of hitting this base AC) but didn't implement because, in a nutshell, 10 is a nicer number.

'course, doing it this way because of a lack of rules knowledge is just sad...

 

[shadow]

I remember back in high school I had a player who played a rogue with a penchant for caltrops. He had a bag with several hundred caltrops. Once when being persued down a corridor, he anounced he spilled the entire bag in a 5' square. When the persuers failed their saving throw I announced that they took 1d4 damage (or something like that, I don't remember the 2e rule). He was miffed. He said that they should have taken at least 10d4 damage (enough to kill them), because "the rules state that you take 1d4 damage for an area with 10 caltrops, I had over 100 in this small area, so it should do 10 times the damage!" Needless to say the ensuing argument lasted quite some time.